AND Publishing:
The Piracy Project

The Piracy Project is an international publishing and exhibition project exploring the philosophical, legal and practical implications of book piracy and creative modes of reproduction.

The Piracy Project collection was housed at Grand Union from December 2013 to February 2014, accessible to members of the public during exhibition opening hours.

Through research and an international call for submissions The Project has gathered a collection of more than 150 modified, appropriated and copied books from all over the world. The collection, which is catalogued online, is the starting point for talks and work groups around the concept of originality, the notion of authorship and politics of copyright.

The Piracy Project is not about stealing or forgery. It is about creating a platform to innovatively explore the spectrum of copying, re-editing, translating, paraphrasing, imitating, re-organising, manipulating of already existing works. Here creativity and originality sit not in the borrowed material itself, but in the way it is handled.

Andrea Francke & Eva Weinmayr jointly run The Piracy Project, an international publishing and exhibition project around the concept of originality, the fluidity of authorship and the politics of copyright, as part of AND Publishing’s research programme.

Andrea and Eva took part in a panel discussion with Cornelia Sollfrank, as part of Volume Art & Book Fair at the Library of Birmingham, 5–7 December 2013, to discuss their practices and the legal frameworks that we engage with when dealing with each others’ work. You can see a recording of the discussion here.